Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Monday, July 11, 2016

Starting with the royals most affected, the British, the first thing
that must be done is to set aside the entire list of crimes cited as
“evidence” of the tyranny of King George III in the Declaration of
Independence written by Thomas Jefferson. It is as close as one could
possibly get to being completely untrue. King George III was not a
tyrant, never acted against the wishes of his government and never
overstepped his legal authority. It was only that the King presented an
easier target to vilify than the nameless, faceless members of
Parliament who passed the legislation which the American colonists
objected to. In fact, if one reads his own words on the subject, King
George III was at every step leading up to the outbreak of war, always
anxious to avoid conflict and resolve the matter peacefully. He was
prepared to be reasonable but certainly felt that what was being asked
of the colonists was not at all out of order. Once violence did erupt,
however, he was the most committed in all of Britain to continuing the
war until victory was secured. He threatened, more than once, to
abdicate rather than accept American independence or to accept the Whig
party into government who would push for such a thing.

As the war went on, the King became understandably bitter and voiced
contemptuous views of the American populace, despite the fact that
two-thirds were active or passive loyalists. However, as he said to John
Adams, the first U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, while he was the
last to agree to the independence of America, he was indeed the first to
extend a hand of friendship to the new nation and work to retain it as
part of the British trade network and commercial empire. What many would
find more surprising though, is that the King’s son and heir, the
Prince of Wales and future King George IV, was allied with a political
faction that practically cheered every American victory in the war. This
group was backed by the Prince of Wales and focused around Charles Fox,
the Marquis of Rockingham and Edmund Burke. Members of this group even
took to wearing the colors of Washington’s Continental Army to show
their solidarity with the American cause and most of these men were
wealthy and/or aristocratic which says something about just how
“revolutionary” the war in America really was. Fox and Burke would later
part company over the much more revolutionary war in France with Fox
supporting the revolutionaries and Burke staunchly opposing them. (Read more.)

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